You Can See Russia From Here

 

If you haven’t been following the Alaskan Journey, here are the previous entries:

The ‘Early’ Beginning of Our Journey

Welcome Aboard Wednesday

Inside Cruisin’

Catch Me If You Can, Alaska

Remember The Night We Hijacked a Piano Bar?

Oh, Jew Know

and

I Ditched My Fag To Go To Skag {Way}

Our trip was approaching the final days and our last port before being dropped off for good was Sitka. 

Anyone seen The Proposal?!?!  Even though it wasn’t exactly filmed in Sitka, the story took place in Sitka. 

There is a lot of Russian culture remaining in Sitka, as it was the Capitol of Alaska when the state still belonged to the Russians. 

The cruise ship couldn’t get close enough to the docks due to shallow waters, so this is the only port where we had to be tendered to land via the lifeboats.  It was really odd because the music playing on the lifeboat was the theme song from Titanic. A little creepy, but okay…

We perused the town and the shops {duh!} and found some really cool Russian-influenced buys and then of course headed to go eat.  I mean, what else did we go on this trip for?  We split off in two groups, and the Brown twins and I headed to a little crab shack/patio type place.  Really it was a glorified picnic tent, but whatev. 

They were selling these monstrous crab legs for $20 PER.LEG.

Normally, they sell a cluster of those crab legs for $20, however when a cruise ship comes into town, they jack their prices way up because they know they can rip off tourists.  Those mothers… 

However, when we were purchasing our clam chowder, reindeer sausage, etc., we noticed the sign hadn’t been changed and we asked since it said the true price, if we could get a cluster for $20 rather than just a leg.  This she{male} flipped out, turned the sign around and had some pretty harsh words for us.  I can’t really describe this woman, except that she was definitely a character.  I’ll let the pictures do her justice.

 

She looked so familiar to me, and I couldn’t place where I might have seen such a lady person before., until it hit me.  I’ve seen her on 50 First Dates.  You know Adam Sandler’s weird he/she counterpart at the aquarium? 

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After eating, the boys and I headed up to Sitka’s Fire Department where we met Howie, a wee little pocket person that was just as nice as could be.

 

Howie gave us some directions on where we could hike to possibly see some bears.  Upon our journey, we stopped off at a neat little cemetery.  It was cool to see such old, withered headstones.  Well it was until we realized it was more of a children’s cemetery.  Talk about Debbie Downer!

 

We continued our walk a bit further until we came across the bridge over the creek – the one Howie directed us to.  It was beautiful!  And sure enough…guess who was there waiting for some food?  Da Bears! {to be read in the SNL Da’Bears skit voice}

Seeing the bear pretty much concluded our Sitkan adventure, as in order to get back to the boat in time, we had to wait in an extremely long line for the lifeboats to take us back.  Sitka was neat, however, I could do without if I chose to go back again. 

When I got back to my room, I noticed my bed had been turned down but there wasn’t a towel buddy waiting for me.  I was a little annoyed that I didn’t have a special friend for the day, until I walked around the corner and found him.  Love it!